3 Toronto Maple Leafs Who Could Get Traded Before Regular Season
The Toronto Maple Leafs could make a trade before the regular starts to stay under the salary cap.
Over the next week, things could get very interesting for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Although the roster looks set, the team is still going to be struggling to stay under the salary cap. They’ll be able to make things work by sending players down to the Toronto Marlies, but by doing so, they could lose “x player” for free.
As such, instead of wishing they clear waivers, the Leafs may be more interested in trading a current roster player to secure an asset instead.
As we sit right now, the Leafs have 27 players still with the roster, which means they need to make six more cuts. We know that Nick Robertson and Josh Ho-Sang won’t be part of the Leafs plans on opening night, but who else is going to get sent to the Marlies?
Is Kurtis Gabriel going to fight his way (quite literally) to a roster spot? Could Kirill Semyonov surprise Leafs fans and become the fourth line centre this year?
There are still so many unanswered questions as we get ready for the last preseason game, and it’ll be quite exciting to see what enfolds.
As a result, let’s look at three players who could get traded prior to the regular season.
No. 1: Adam Brooks
It’s been five years since the Leafs took Adam Brooks 92nd overall in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft and although he’s only played 18 career NHL games since, I’d consider that selection a success thus far.
Brooks was a late-bloomer when he got drafted and that’s followed him throughout his professional career. At 25-years-old, Brooks is still a fringe NHLer, who has found it difficult to stay full-time with the Leafs.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Toronto currently has six NHL centres that are all ahead of him in the depth chart, with many more making a case to leap him. He’s never going to compete with Auston Matthews or John Tavares’ spot, but Alex Kerfoot, David Kampf, Pierre Engvall and Jason Spezza are all ahead of him, as he compete for a job.
Within the system, Semyon Der-Arguchintsev, Alex Steeves, Kirill Semyonov and Mikhail Abramov are all fighting for that similar position as Brooks, and all of them arguably have a higher ceiling them him.
Similar to what the team did with Carl Grundstrom, Trevor Moore and Mason Marchment, it may be time to trade away another piece of that 2018 Calder Cup winning Toronto Marlies team, to give Brooks a chance to succeed somewhere else.
No 2: Pierre Engvall
By all accounts, Pierre Engvall is not going to be part of the 12-man roster on opening night for the Leafs. Based on his skillset and contract, if he gets sent to the Toronto Marlies, he’d more than likely get claimed by another team because he’s not waiver exempt.
Instead of letting him walk for free, it may make sense to trade him.
Even though his $1.25M contract is reasonable, the Leafs may decide to keep someone like Kurtis Gabriel who’s making $750K instead, because that extra cash could come in handy down the road.
During his tenure over the past two years, Engvall has been a good player. He’s put up decent stats, but he’s had an issue with consistency. He would score in bunches and then go cold for 20 games, which isn’t something you want.
His size (6-foot-4, 215 pounds) is nice to have, but you can sacrifice losing him based on his production alone.
Engvall is a great 13th forward, but if you think you’re going to lose him on waivers for free, it might be worth trading him to gain an asset.
No 3: Alex Kerfoot
If the Leafs have Nick Ritchie and Michael Bunting as the top two left-wingers, and they think that Ilya Mikheyev can do a similar job beside David Kamp and Ondrej Kase for half the price as Alex Kerfoot, it may mean the end to Kerfoot’s career in Toronto.
In terms of trade assets, Kerfoot is your most logical choice. At $3.5M, that’s a big contract to have playing a shutdown role on the team’s third line. If Toronto thinks that Mikheyev can replace Kerfoot there and save $2M, trading Kerfoot makes a lot of sense.
The Leafs blue-line could use an upgrade and one way to solve that is to trade Kerfoot for a defenseman. Rasmus Sandin and Travis Dermott are a fine third-pair, but Sandin and Justin Holl would be even better.
You’re not going to get a top-four defenseman by trading Kerfoot straight up, but you could be packaging him with a prospect and first or second-round draft pick.
Toronto should be one of the top-scoring teams in the NHL again, but they would benefit tremendously by beefing up their defense-core. If one defenseman gets injured, they’re screwed, so they need as much depth as possible.
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Kerfoot could be that trade-piece to make this team better, so it wouldn’t be shocking if it happened before the regular season starts.